The Carnivorous Caverns

By Phil Tucker
Self Published
OSE
Levels 2-4

Beneath the earth slumbers an ancient, sentient cavern system that feasts on souls. When it awakens, it lures its prey with a false village that appears out of nowhere—its streets filled with eerie, hollow-eyed villagers clinging to fragmented memories. Nothing in the village is real, yet everything conspires to drag adventurers into the depths.

This 27 page adventure presents a little village with some weird shit going on, as well as a cavern system with … twentish rooms in it? It’s one of those “the dungeon is a living being/monster” things, and one of the better ones at that. A kind of mashup of your adventure inside a giant purple worm with Body Snatchers. It’s hits everything it should, even if it is a bit tortured at times.

Well now, where to begin? This thing is a living dungeon. It travels underground. Once it settles down for a bit it kind of grows a fake village up above it, using it as a kind of angler fish bait to lure people in to the tunnels that go inside of it. Once there you get pod’d and become another villager that it can use to lure others in. The pod person village, as well as the internal beast journey, are both decent examples of their genres, and together they marry well.

The village here is interesting. More so than usual. Generally the village section of an adventure is just a preamble, a pretext for an investigation before you go hacking, when there is adventure in the village at all. In this case though I think the village may be decent in its own right and able to sustain a decent amount of play. What helps it is the support for the DM. There are a couple of mini-systems in play here. There’s a village mob and chase system, for when things inevitably go south. I’m happy to see this and is pretty much what I mean by supporting the DM. This is something that could pop up, more than likely, and helps the DM run this section. Everyone in the village is a pod person, also. And there’s this little mini-game where you can help them realize they are people. The more time you spend with them and so on, you can trigger an epiphany with them where they can become willing and capable allies. And this can have a real impact later on in the dungeon in some cases with, say, the priest helping a corrupted paladin regain their faith, in one of the more obvious examples. 

The adventure does “an air of something not quite right” quite well. Giving you initial impressions of the village and then things you notice if you pay more attention. You hear a smiths anvil being used, in rhythmic strokes. But, then, the strokes NEVER stop. Or, the bustle of village life. That repeats every thirty minutes. You’ve got to pay attention. Or, shadowy form of “half pod’d” people that opera through windows and lurk in the general menagerie of homes. The people have those short little personality keywords that I think work so well, as well as some fears and wants … that can be surprisingly insightful and touching. For that priest, the fears are “the ground and what lies beneath it, and when the Referee deems it opportune will step out onto the church roof to stand precariously upon the end gable, highly visible.” and the wants are “to understand the aching loss in her heart where her faith once resonated.” This is pretty good shit. In another place there’s an adventurer hiding the hay in a barn, telling the party, if discovered, tha the villagers are weird and that they are out to get them all, hes been hiding from the villagers. He, also, is a pod person. For each of them also has a ploy, a way, a quest, something to hook the party, to get them to travel in to the tunnels to the down below. At which point, in 1d4 rounds, the villagers brick the entrance closed after the party is in. Woah! Nice! Really one of the better pod person villages, giving the resources you need to support all aspects of play, from hacking to personal development. 

Transitioning in to the dungeons … things get weird. There’s both some “traditional caverns” stuff as well as some deep shafts to explore to get to other places. Inside we’ve got a decent assortment of things: the cancer room, the pod people souls room, the giant tapeworm room, the village of people living in the stomach. Another room has beetles literally covering ALL of the surfaces … tread carefully or summon the momma beetle. But, also, harvest some greek fire from the puddles/slime? There’s a decent variety of spelunking, talking, stabbing and so on. Lots of things to exploit in a “neutral environment” kind of way. We’ve got an ecosystem here, The biome so to speak, and even the 600 year old naga full of loot has a role to play as the caterpillar giving out sage like wisdom, even if he has no mushroom or hookah. 

Formatting is great. There’s a nice combination of shading, offsets, whitespace, bullets, and text combining to help draw the attention where it needs to go. A monster summary sheet and the “always on” effects of the dungeon placed on the map for easy reference.

The language can also be a bit tortured at times. I get what Phil is trying to do, but it just feels belaboured at points. The village, at first glance “A score of thatched houses, shabby but stout, clustered together like dullards waiting to be yelled at” I think not. And there’s a decent amount of this strained effort in the descriptions. The thesaurus was consulted perhaps a bit much. But then you’ll get something like this in a hook “Blitzfark the schoolmaster is universally acknowledged as an vainglorious fraud, but he insists the divining rod he stole from a …” Not bad (and, again, with the charlatan makes right.) Or, in the dungeon, the mob “Naked, moist, some faces familiar, grub-pale, they hurl poison cysts filled with milky lymphatic fluid before closing with bone spars to subdue and drag victims to pods.” There’s an image for you! It’s not that you cant use a $10 word, but the prevalence of it and the the way they seem forced really stand out.

I might note, also, that there is a “Random village occurrence” table that I’m not sure what to make of. It’s a little random and disconnected from the adventure. If you squint hard then there are digestive juices and the like causing things, as well as the “conjured villager” angle. But, also, it feels it just doesn’t hit well. You can’t really do something with the villagers, I guess, since they are all controlled but the beast? So it has to be other weird things? They just feel like window dressing instead of things to really heighten paranoia or drive investigation or cause … questioning of contrasting beliefs in the players heads?

So, a little bit of tortured writing A few things that don’t hit well. But, generally, a decent adventure that looks to do what it does in an effortless way (except for that thesaurus.) It doesn’t feel forced. This is a great first effort. Perhaps a little journeyman, but I’ll take it.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is nine pages which, along with the embedded pages in the description, give a great account of how things are organized and described. A great preview!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/495916/the-carnivorous-caverns?1892600